Fossil Wiki:Sourcing
This page is a style guide, describing how to create citations in articles. Fossil Wiki uses a slightly modified version of the The MLA Style Manual. For questions relating to the MLA Style, please refer to this manual. Attribution, which is a policy on Fossil Wiki, mandates the provision of sources. Attribution is required for direct quotes, along with practically all other material. As Duty & Valour does not accept original ideas or fan theories, all writing should be based on reliable sources, and therefore be referenced. Any material that is challenged and for which no source is provided may be removed by any editor. If you do not know how to format the citation, provide as much information as you can, and others may fix it for you. Why sources should be cited *To credit a source for providing useful information and to avoid claims of plagiarism. *To show that your edit is not original research. *To ensure that the content of articles is credible and can be checked by any reader or editor. *To help users find additional reliable information on the topic. *To improve the overall credibility and authoritative character of Fossil Wiki. *To reduce the likelihood of editorial disputes, or to resolve any that arise. Note: Fossil Wiki and other wiki-based articles and categories cannot be used as sources. How to reference articles *'PLEASE copy and paste the relevant code(s) below and insert your source's corresponding information as required!' *'For the sourcing style below, it is acceptable, though not required, to list the page numbers where you got your information from. If listing the page number, please do so after the published date of your source (example: 1966. 456-458.)' Single insertion of a reference For the single insertion of a reference, the "name" parameter is not needed. On the Edit page, this is placed at the insertion point of citation. :Burke, Kenneth. "A Fake Example Title of a Nonexistent Essay" collected in Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method. Berkeley: University of California, 1966. *To see this reference code reproduced like it would be in an article, click these → Burke, Kenneth. "A Fake Example Title of a Nonexistent Essay" collected in Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method. Berkeley: University of California, 1966.Smith, John. A book about something. Berkeley: University of California, 2007.Smith, John. A book about something. Berkeley: University of California, 2007. 456-458. By clicking 1, you will see how the reference code reproduces in an article for essays, etc. as well as the work that that essay appears in. By clicking 2, you will see how the reference code reproduces in an article for books, etc. By clicking 3, you will see how the reference code reproduces in an article with the page numbers at the end. *For citations of essays or articles, remember to use quotation marks to enclose the title. For titles of books, periodicals, etc. please use the wiki-code '' to enclose the article, thus italicizing it. *If citing the page number(s) for information, please scroll up one paragraph and re-read that part. Multiple insertion of the same reference On the Edit page, this is placed at the first insertion point of citation: :Burke, Kenneth. Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method. Berkeley: University of California, 1966. *If citing the page number(s) for information, please scroll up one paragraph and re-read that part. This is placed at the second and all subsequent insertion points of citation: :''' Producing the reference list Most importantly, add the following code at the end of the article, but before the "See also" and "External links" sections. This code will automatically display the reference list, showing nearly everything tagged with ref tags. Notes and references Long reference lists For reference lists with fifteen or more different references, include the tag in a scroll box. Rules This list only includes the basics for the rules. For more details, please follow the footnotes provided. #Do not reference the introductory paragraph(s).This is done to prevent "congestion" in the main introduction of the article. As most—if not all—information appears elsewhere in the article, do not begin sourcing until after the first heading. If, of course, the information does not appear elsewhere in the article, then it is acceptable to source it in the introduction. #References go immediately after punctuation and outside of quotation marks, with no space between the end of a sentence and a reference tag.This is a stylistic rule adopted from Wikipedia and many other English sources. #When naming references with , use the full source name, or a distinct abbreviation of the source's name in some consistent fashion.Doing this helps to prevent accidental duplicates of a reference. For example: one ref tag named "Burke" and one named "Burke, Kennedy" will result in duplicate references on the same page. #Italicize references where appropriate, as with book titles, etc.This is another grammar/stylistic rule. #References are absolutely, beyond a doubt, bet your life on it, '''required in all infoboxes for 99% of information.This is because most readers will casually glance at an article's infobox before reading the article. This is not the same as not including references in the introduction. Infobox sourcing is required; get over it. Likewise, there is no need to source painfully obvious information like the sex of a person. #Use the template when sourcing infobox information.MediaWiki likes it, which means so do we. Reasoning More information *The pipe trick does not work when enclosing between "ref" tags. Saladin (novel) renders in the references list (generated by the tag) as: *#↑ Saladin (novel)\ *Reference tags do not work inside of transcluded templates. See m:Cite.php#Current issues for more information. *References cannot be nested. *In addition, you can read Wikipedia's policy at Wikipedia:Citing sources. While not all the rules are the same, most of the basics are explained in more detail on Wikipedia. Wikipedia:Footnotes explains more of the "how to" and technical aspects of sourcing. See also *Fossil Wiki:Attribution External links *The Owl: MLA Formatting and Style Guide Category:Fossil Wiki policies and guidelines